The Boy Who Drew Cats
by Spring Zephyr
Summary: There are too many thoughts in his head tonight – every time he closes his eyes, another reveals itself – but at least he can say the following wasn't one of his: "We could tell bed time stories." Gift fic for Underdog Hero.


**I've never written for Natsume before, but I tried to capture the slightly melancholy feeling this series has. Both stories are based on a Japanese fable called "the Boy Who Drew Cats".**

In eighteen minutes, the clock will turn three.

There's no afternoon light filtering through Natsume's curtains. In fact, the sun hasn't even risen yet. He yearns to sleep, and yet he's not slept for a second so far. There are too many thoughts in his head tonight – every time he closes his eyes, another reveals itself – but at least he can say the following wasn't one of his:

"We could tell bed time stories."

"Excuse me?"

Natsume rolls over to face the chubby cat who'd normally be asleep by now, his companion be damned, and props himself onto his elbows, resting his head on one of his palms. Except it's not Nyanko-Sensei's face he's looking at, it's the cat's stubby-tailed butt. Of course.

"A bed time story. Until you fall asleep. That's something humans do, isn't it? Or singing to one another."

Thinking Nyanko-Sensei's singing voice would only make it harder to fall asleep, Natsume quietly agrees to the story.

"Once upon a time, there was a farmer who had many hard-working children, and one lazy child. Every day, the hard-working children went into the rice paddies to harvest the rice that provided money and food for their family, and the lazy child would get distracted before he ever set foot into a paddy."

"This sounds like a great story," Natsume muttered. Then, in a louder voice, he inquired, "What distracted the child?"

"He liked to draw cats!"

Deciding it was not worth the hassle to interject, Natsume let his own cat continue, "All kinds of cats! Big cats, little cats, cats with stripes or spots, long or short hair, young or old. Wherever there was a patch of dirt and a stick to be found, the child would drop whatever he was doing and begin to draw, but he only ever drew cats.

"Well, a good farmer does more than draw pictures of cats. Deciding the child was not cut out for farm life, his parents sent him away to a monastery where he would study to become a monk."

"Did the monastery have lots of cats?" Natsume asked, thinking about pictures of shrines that he'd seen where the resident cats outnumbered the people. If he'd been sent to a shrine, or a monastery, with lots of cats, surely that would've made the child happy.

"Not a one," Nyanko-Sensei replied. "And because the only other way he could pass the time was by studying or praying, the child began to draw even more cats. The monk determined the boy was unsuitable for priesthood also, and sent him away just as his parents had to become a beggar."

Natsume stared at him expectantly.

"The end."

"...That's it?"

"That's it," Nyanko-Sensei agreed.

"That's a stupid story."

The cat puffs up a little, his fur bristling as though he disagrees, even though it really was a stupid story. "I'd like to see you do better," he challenges after a while.

"All right..."

Natsume pauses. He's not much of a storyteller.

"...Once upon a time, there was a boy who liked to draw cats."

"Come up with your own story...!"

"He was the son of a farmer, and had many hard-working siblings, and although he tried his hardest, he was often distracted from his chores and ridiculed as lazy for it. The child's parents pitied him, but they also knew they couldn't provide for their family when the boy kept forgetting about his chores, so they sent him to study in a shrine where they hoped he would have a better future. His siblings, though saddened to see him leave, agreed and wished him well during his last day at home. They all knew he would be surrounded by cats at the monastery, and they hoped that his love of cats would make it easier to focus.

"For a few days, the child worked diligently as he was supposed to. But being surrounded by so many new cats made him want to draw them all, and eventually he succumbed to his old ways. The monk responsible for teaching him noticed this, and that the child was a very talented artist, no doubt because every time the child was supposed to copy a text or recite a mantra, he drew a cat instead. At this point, the monk could've chosen to send him away, but decided to encourage his increasingly elaborate cat drawings instead."

Nyanko-Sensei made a somewhat annoyed huffing noise, and Natsume hurried to conclude the story, " The boy agreed to cultivate his artistic talents and stop drawing cats in patches of dirt and merely for his own entertainment, and became as hard-working as his farmer siblings. He then became a talented and well-known artist, albeit one who only drew cats."

"That's a stupid story," Nyanko-Sensei replies.

But somehow they both manage to fall asleep now.


End file.
